Bouldering News

Who's pushing the limits in bouldering? Find out here. Climbing magazine reports cutting-edge bouldering news from around the world: the hardest new problems, the most amazing onsights, and up-and-coming boulderers you need to know about.

USA Climbing, the United States National Governing Body for the sport of competition climbing announced that it will webcast both Open and Youth Bouldering National Championships starting next week in Madison, WI. Here is a quick breakdown of the schedule and livestream info.

9/17/14 - Ramón Julian Puigblanque not only took a silver medal in the lead climbing world championships last weekend, he also claimed a new world record in hangboard time. Julian clung to a pair of one-pad holds for 2 minutes 44.34 seconds to shatter the old record, set by Alex Megos earlier in September, by more than 30 seconds.

8/23/14 - Adam Ondra and Juliane Wurm won a dramatic Bouldering World Championships in Munich, Germany, on Saturday. American Alex Puccio finished second in the women's competition, needing just one attempt more than Wurm to finish three out of the four final problems.

8/11/14 - The next time your gym partner says "That's a crappy hold!" she may mean more than size or texture. In a study published this summer in Current Microbiology, researchers found that every gym hold they tested had traces of microorganisms associated with fecal matter.

7/17/14 - A 23-year-old died yesterday at a deep water soloing area on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. After jumping from the cliffs at the Dique del Oeste area, the man stayed underwater for 20 minutes for unknown reasons and presumably drowned.

7-11-14 Ashima Shiraishi has become the second female to climb V14 ever! Yesterday, Shiraishi sent Golden Shadow (V14) in Rocklands, South Africa. The route was originally put up by Fred Nicole in 2004 with a suggested grade of V15, but was downgraded as it saw further ascents. The 13-year-old climbing marvel also repeated Beta Move (V13) during her trip, which gives her five V13s in her impressive career this far.

After eight events spread across seven countries, this year’s IFSC Boulder World Cup has come to a close. Japan’s Akiyo Noguchi and Germany’s Jan Hojer are this year’s champions in the women’s and men’s divisions, respectively. It was an exciting season, that all came down to the final event in Laval, France.

Englishman John Ellison was diagnosed with cancer in late 2011 and given only a few years to live. Ellison had been judging climbing comps for about a decade, and at the world championships in Paris, nearly a year after his diagnosis, he had an epiphany: The climbing community was like a vast and yet very close family.

From the Deep South last winter to Europe in the spring, and then on to South Africa in the summer and Colorado in the fall, Jimmy Webb seemed to be everywhere and climbing everything, usually in blazing speed.

11/15/13 - Ronnie Dickson, a 26-year-old above-knee amputee from Florida, sent Dragon's Turn (V9) in the Shawangunks of New York after three days of effort. The problem was Dickson's hardest yet, and he is believed to be the second leg amputee in the U.S. to boulder V9, after Craig DeMartino.

10/15/13 - Pat Ament, one of the leaders of 1960s bouldering and free climbing in America, was inducted into the Boulder Sports Hall of Fame in late September. Ament, 67, entered the hall of fame along with cyclist Dale Stetina, runner Steve Jones, and triathlete Joanne Ernst.

9/27/13 - The American Alpine Club and Mohonk Preserve announced that ground has been broken on a new, 50-site climber campground for the Shawangunks, one of America's most historic and popular climbing areas.

The flooding across northeastern Colorado took an enormous human and economic toll. And though it pales by comparison, climbers across Boulder and the northern Front Range are recognizing another toll as they dry out their homes and get back to work: the fall climbing season has been erased from the calendar, and the future for many local climbing areas is extremely uncertain.

8/26/13 - German phenom Alex Megos may have broken set another climbing record in Australia: A week after making the first ascent of Australia's hardest route, the 20-year-old has established a new link-up in the Grampians' Hollow Mountain Cave, where the famed Wheel of Life traverses the length of the cave.

8/26/13 - Alex Puccio of the U.S. wrapped up the 2013 Boulder World Cup season on a high note as she earned a silver medal in Munich, Germany. With this strong result, her best finish of the year, Puccio concludes the 2013 bouldering season ranked in third place, the second time she has reached this milestone.

6/27/13 - Briton Shauna Coxsey reported on Twitter that she climbed Nuthin' but Sunshine (V13) in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, joining the very small group of women that have climbed this grade.

Climbers expecting to travel to the Canadian Rockies for alpine or sport routes this summer may need to alter their plans after massive floods in southern Alberta devastated the town of Canmore and surrounding areas. More than 8 inches of rain fell in Canmore last week, causing normally small streams such as Cougar Creek, site of many popular sport climbs, to swell into vast and churning rivers, causing extensive damage.

6/9/13 - Russian Dimitri Sharafutdinov and Austrian Anna Stöhr won the only bouldering IFSC World Cup on U.S. soil this year, capping a two-day competition at the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, Colorado.

If climbing makes it into the Olympics in 2020, the medalists will have to be all-around masters of plastic. To win gold under a new IFSC proposal for the Games, climbers will have to compete in all three competition disciplines: bouldering, lead, and speed.

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